“ Put simply, you plagiarize if you present other writer’s words and ideas as your own. You do not plagiarize if you ‘ provide citations for all direct quotations and paraphrases, for borrowed ideas, and for facts that do not belong to general knowledge. ” (Williams, 2002) Clearly Sara’s idea to incorporate someone else’s words into an oral presentation representsplagiarism.
As part of the group, it is my responsibility to make Sara and the others aware that there is no distinction between written or oral plagiarism. Sara needs to write down the author and source of the paragraphs she is exhorting the group to use in our presentation. We must give credit not only for pieces of the work cited word for word, but also for the ideas we are incorporating. Any part of our presentation that is not our own original thoughts must give credit to the author appropriately.
For instance, should we decide to use the paragraph above by the author Williams, we could use it in our presentation by saying, “ According to Williams and his work, Avoiding Plagiarism, for the Hamilton College Student Handbook website, you cannot use another’s words and ideas without giving them proper credit. ” For the presentation to be unique, I would suggest that the group brainstorm further ideas of our own regarding the subject to be addressed. Those ideas, together with the information we use from another source and properly cited as such, would be the proper format for a well thought out and engaging presentation.
